Ruskin Bond and Ganesh Saili have edited The landour Cookbook: Over Hundred Years of Hillside Cooking. They tell Jaskiran Chopra about the joy of good food and its landour connection
When the second edition of The landour Cookbook: Over Hundred Years of Hillside Cooking was released this year, this was not just another run-of-the mill cookbook. This epicure’s delight is the concoction of recipes by American missionary expatriates, whose contributions spread close to a century. If you stir up any of these recipes, full of fish, fowl and flesh, your home will come alive to the distinct aroma and flavours of the “little America in the hills” which landour (Old Mussoorie) once was.
land of pine, oak, deodar and rhododendron, with its winding paths and many-hued floral trees and colourful birds, landour at 7,500 ft became a summer retreat for the British soon after it shaped up as a convalescent depot for British troops in the 1820s. Also, the American missionaries had a strong presence here. In the 1930s, the landour Community Centre, now part of Woodstock School, was a beehive of activity as it was here that the Prebyterians caught up with the Mennonites. It was here that the latest juicy gossip was exchanged. And it was during these days that the landour Community Cookbook, an important reminder of landour’s American connection, was first brought out.
Renowned author Ruskin Bond, together with his old friend and neighbour Ganesh Saili, edited and introduced an edition of this fascinating classic cookbook a few years ago. Both admit that though the recipes have a distinctly American flavour, there is an intermingling of European, American and Indian flavours which create a unique Anglo-Indian aroma. Bond and Saili share a love for good food — the only difference being that Saili cooks and Bond devours it. Bond admits that he has no business collaborating on an introduction to a cookery book since the extent of his culinary efforts goes no further than boiling an egg. Ganesh, on the other hand, has been known to cook everything from Banana Fritters to Mutton Chops.
landour was the headquarters of the American missionary community for more than 100 years. After they all departed, around the 1960s, the tradition of exotic cooking continued on the hillside and even today, many of these recipes are religiously followed in landour’s homes as well as bakeries.
landour’s bakers, especially the Muslim ones, have been well-known for fudge, stick jaw, marzipan and meringues. (Maula Baksh was the most well-known of them all.) These recipes have been passed on and can still be found at various shops in landour and Mussoorie. “Burnt Caramel Cake”, “Walnut Cake”, “Brown Sponge” and “Coffee Cake” — the list is endless. The range of the landour cookbook covers puddings, salads, infallible cakes, roasts and every food variation in between. It is a welcome walk through the kitchens of HE Wylie, El Moody, EC lochlin and many others with apt quotations and a delicious whiff of nostalgia.
landour’s famous Prakash’s Store, known far and wide for its peanut butter, chutneys and jams, is a living testimony to the amazing power of this cookbook. The taste of its special blackberry jam, cucumber relish and peanut butter never fails to entice both the locals as well as visitors to landour who keep coming back for a bagful of Prakash’s goodies. This quaint little shop has the distinction of being the first in India where the American classic-peanut butter was made commercially available.
These recipes play an important role in keeping the few landour residents bonded as they invite each other to savour the goodies made from the cookbook. landour is a celebrity territory where Bond, Saili, Tom Alter, Stephen Alter, Victor Banerjee and Prannoy Roy have their homes within walking distance of each other. The missions may have departed decades ago but the old traditions of landour, including those set by the classic cookbook, are being carried on by these residents.
Bond, with his characteristic candour, says that he eats “practically everything” but as far as his culinary skills are concerned, they are limited to boiling an egg. “And even about that, I would like to say that the hard-boiled eggs I try to make come out soft-boiled and the soft-boiled ones come out kachcha… it has got to do something with the water up here.” He says that he has often contemplated writing cookbooks with names like “Fifty different ways of boiling an egg” and “101 failed omelette recipes”. Bond calls the chapattis rolled out by him “patriotic” as they normally turn out like maps of the country.
When it comes to food, Bond is full of stories about his maternal grandmother, Ellen Clerke, at whose home he spent several vacations in the Doon valley when he was a child. “My granny had a collection of kitchen proverbs that she used from time to time. Her culinary efforts were fairly simple and wholesome. I grew up on curry and rice for lunch and roast lamb for dinner. If I asked for a second helping, she would admonish me with her favourite proverb: ‘Don’t let your tongue cut your throat’.”
Bond once wrote a poem, ‘In Praise of the Sausage’. This short, brisk poem seems to have been inspired by granny Clerke’s proverbs. The poem goes:
I like a good sausage, I do;
It’s a dish for the chosen and few.
Oh, for a sausage and mash,
And of mustard a dash
And an egg nicely fried — maybe twoIJ
At breakfast or lunch, or at dinner,
The sausage is always a winner;
If you want a good spread
Go for sausage on bread,
And forget all your vows to be slimmer.
He calls the landour cookbook “ancient” and even goes on to say that at times, he developed indigestion when he tried some of these “old fashioned” recipes! “I would like to pay a tribute to the doodhwalas (milkmen) who have been plodding up and down the mountain, providing the landour households with milk of various textures. Without their contribution, half of these cookbook recipes would not have been possible.” He says that these doodhwalas also supply fresh mountain trout fish from the Aglar river. “These are rather small and bony but very tasty and as my granny used to say: ‘Better a small fish than an empty dish’.”
Saili, who swears by the cookbook’s recipes, believes that they are really precious as they are a “record of times that are gone forever, written down by people who are long dead”. He says that it is really remarkable at the way these recipes caught the fancy of connoisseurs till today. “I am sure that when the book was first compiled and printed in 1930, the missionaries had no idea that it would still be around eight decades later.”
Recounting another reason for the recipes being so rich and wholesome, Saili says that most of the missionary children went to Woodstock and had healthy appetites which had to be satisfied when they came home. “So well-nourished were the Woodstock boys and girls that in the Mussoorie Olympics they outran the underfed kids of Wynberg Allen or the Oakgrove (Railway) School in Jharipani who were fed on a frugal diet which strictly followed the Keventer’s Railway menu.”
“We should remember that these dishes were cooked in those times on wood fires and on cast iron stoves on which ovens were placed. Even when electricity did come to landour, the supply was erratic. later, kerosene stoves came in,” says Saili.
The very first edition of the cookbook (1930) has a foreword which says: “We wish to thank you all for your interest and practical help in this book. It is your book, and we hope it will prove useful and helpful in every department.” The book was reprinted in 1938 by the Mussoorie Book Society. Several editions came out after that. In 2001, Bond and Saili brought out their version.
In All the Way to Heaven, Stephen Alter recounts his boyhood in landour in the 1950s and the 1960s. He talks specifically of the cookbook and says it contained recipes for everything from rhododendron jelly to macaroni casserole. He also writes, “The missionaries in landour initiated a cargo cult, bringing with them sacred objects from America, cookie cutters in the shape of gingerbread men, tins of Hershey’s cocoa, marshmallows.”